Looking back on the Trollope Project

Right so hello and welcome back to Books and Things and welcome to another video and today I'm going to be talking about my 2019 Trollope project. So in the year 2019 I decided to set myself the challenge of reading a book every month by the author Anthony Trollope. Anthony Trollope is a wonderful Victorian author, he's one of my favourite writers, he's got a brilliant turn of phrase, a wonderful characterisation, fantastic plots, I just think he's an amazing writer. And I had at the beginning of 2019 read 11 books of his 47 novels, he wrote a lot of books. So I decided I wanted to catch up and read a few more Trollope books and set myself the challenge of reading 12 books by him in 2019, which I did. I read 12 books by Anthony Trollope in the year so I've now read 23 out of his 47 novels, I'm so close to halfway. So I thought today I would chat through the 12 books that I've read from my least favourite to my favourite and then talk a little bit more about my experience reading a lot of Trollope in one year. So we will start at the bottom and work our way up to the top. At number 12 I have Phineas Redou. This is the fourth book in the Pallitzer series. So as well as all of his standalone novels, Anthony Trollope wrote two quite famous series of six interconnected novels. One is the Barter Chronicles and the other is the Pallitzer series. The Pallitzer series, also known as the Parliamentary novels, is kind of all set around British politics in the Victorian period. And while each book has a kind of relatively separate storyline, a lot of characters crop up between books and they work best read in order. I really like the Pallitzer series but I don't like it as much as the Barter Chronicles. As far as I'm concerned in the Pallitzer series there are three amazing novels. Can You Forgive Her, the first in the series, and the fifth and sixth in the series, The Prime Minister and the Duke's Children. There are then two quite good novels, Phineas Finn and The Useless Diamonds, and there is one not so great book and that is Phineas Radue, the fourth book in the Pallitzer series and my least favourite Trollope that I read this year. Phineas Radue is the only Anthony Trollope book I've ever read which I didn't really like. That's not to say there was nothing good about it, I do think the writing is as good as it always is, I do think the characterisation is wonderful as it always is, I do think there are some really strong plot lines in here and the like third quarter of the book is really dramatic and really exciting and really clever. But the second book in the is called Phineas Finn and follows a man called Phineas Finn. The fourth book in the series, Phineas Radue, also follows Phineas Finn. I can't tell you too much about it without spoiling Phineas Finn but as far as I was concerned the ending of Phineas Finn was great and I didn't need Phineas Finn to return but he does return and you have another book with him and I didn't need another book of Phineas Finn, partly because I don't love Phineas Finn, he's not one of my favourite Trollope characters, but also because I felt like his story was done in Phineas Finn and I didn't need him to come back. And I don't love the book Phineas Radue, I think it is quite slow to get started and then when it does get started it goes in directions that I don't want it to go in. I really don't like the ending of Phineas Radue and that's the first time I've ever read an Anthony Trollope book where I disagree with his ending. Usually I really trust Anthony Trollope to do the right thing for all of the characters but I got to the end of Phineas Radue and I was like no that's not, that's not what I wanted to happen. It's fine, I've made my peace with it, it works with the next two books in the series and it is worth reading Phineas Radue to read on with the Palletser series because the last two books are two of the best in the series, but I did not love Phineas Radue at all, it was definitely the low point of Trollope this year for me. At number 11 I have Harry Heathcote of Gangoyle. This is a Christmas story that I read in December, it's a short novel, one of Trollope's shortest novels, and it follows a man called Harry Heathcote who lives in Australia in the middle of nowhere with his wife and sister-in-law and we follow his life and his relationship with his neighbours. He is quite judgmental and independent and proud and therefore doesn't get on that well with the people around him and in a kind of traditional Christmas Victorian story way learns to become a kinder person over the course of the book. I did enjoy this, it's quite a fun little read, it just didn't feel like Anthony Trollope for me and I don't know why, I don't know what it was about, it was just the writing style didn't feel the same and maybe it's just that the Australian setting and the very different plot line just like threw me because it wasn't what I'm used to from Trollope. It just didn't feel like quintessentially Anthony Trollope for me so I enjoyed it but not my favourite Trollope. At number 10 I have the Eustace Diamonds. This is the third book in the Palletser series. I enjoyed this one, it's quite fun. We follow in part a woman called Lizzie Eustace who is not very nice and she has possession of some diamonds which she says her late husband gave to her and her late husband's family say he had no business to give to her and are a family heirloom. Lizzie will not give back the diamonds and Lizzie is determined to keep the diamonds and chaos ensues. Meanwhile she is also rather keen on a cousin of hers who is rather keen on someone else and there is like a bit of a dramatic love triangle as this young man is torn between the captivating but somewhat awful Lizzie and a young woman who is definitely purer of character but doesn't have quite as much money and scandal attached to her. It's a compelling read, it's really good fun and I do think it's a bit longer than it needs to be which is probably why it's not higher up on this list and also there is quite a similar plot line in another novel higher up on this list which I think is done better in the other novel but it's a good fun read and like I said the Palletser series as a whole is really worth reading. At number nine I have Phineas Finn which as I said is the second book in the Palletser series and this follows a young man called Phineas Finn who is very young, decides to go into politics, is kind of tempted to go into politics by those around him even though it doesn't give him very much money and he doesn't have very much money and he's also torn between a lot of very different women. I quite liked Phineas Finn, I find it really hard to know what my feelings are about Phineas Finn because I do feel like the fact that I don't like Phineas Radoo, the fact that I don't like the sequel to Phineas Finn means that I don't like Phineas Finn as much because I feel it slightly spoils Phineas Finn for me but when I first read it before I read Phineas Radoo I did really love it, like it is a really good book and it is really good fun and the female characters especially that surround Phineas Finn are fascinating even while Phineas Finn himself is sometimes a bit annoying and the women around him particularly Lady Laura and Violet are amazing so I would highly recommend it, it is a really good read and yeah the Palletser series as a whole is great as I said. At number eight I have Cousin Henry, this is a novel I really enjoyed, it's quite a short one and one that I read quite near the beginning of the year. At the beginning of the book we encounter a man who has a fortune, an estate to leave and he feels quite strongly that it is his duty to leave the estate to his nearest male relation even though there is no entail on the estate, he thinks that men should inherit and that he should leave it to Henry, however he also kind of hates his nephew Henry but he really loves his niece who lives with him who is a much nicer person than Henry and a much more stable person than Henry and he's really torn between wanting to leave the estate with the relation of his that he loves who is a woman and leaving the estate to a man which he thinks is what his ancestors would have wanted. He dies and the estate is due to go to Cousin Henry but there is a rumour that a second will may have been made and hidden somewhere about the house and kind of everything goes on from there, it's really really compelling and Henry is a really interesting character because he's very dislikeable but you sort of understand him and he's very compelling to follow sort of because of his dislikeableness in many ways, it's a really interesting novel and one I would highly recommend. At number seven I have Miss Mackenzie, this tells the story of a middle-aged woman, she's unmarried, she's lived a very quiet and retiring life and suddenly her brother dies and she inherits a lot of money and suddenly she has all this money that she's never had before and suddenly suitors start to appear around her where there never had been any before and we follow what happens from there. It's a really lovely read, I think Miss Mackenzie's a really interesting character and quite a different heroine for a Victorian novel so this is definitely a book I would recommend. At number six I have Is He Poppin' Joy, this is a novel that I really enjoyed, I had slightly mixed feelings about it because for the first like two-thirds of this book I was like this is going to be a five-star Trollop book, this is one of the best Trollop books I've read for ages, this is fantastic and then in the last third there was one plot line that slightly annoyed me where Trollop like basically just had a go at women's rights activists in the late 19th century which I just like, it's the Victorian period I'm not that surprised but it just really grated on me and then there's also a subplot which like just appears in the last third for no apparent reason and which didn't have any place in the plot which just made it like longer unnecessarily, it did feel a bit like Trollop suddenly realised his serialisation had to last longer than he had plot to go forward so added in a subplot. So there were some brilliant things in Is He Poppin' Joy, there's some amazing writing, there's some amazing plots but there are a few things about it that did annoy me. So Is He Poppin' Joy follows this young woman who gets married at the beginning of the book to a man that she likes but she doesn't really love him, she doesn't know him very well and as they get to know each other she does come to become fond of him but at the same time she also meets this other young man who is a bit more like the kind of man she might have once imagined that she wanted to marry. The way Trollop writes about marriage and Trollop's exploration of marriage is one of his strengths throughout his books, it's one of the things that he does best, he writes brilliantly about marriage, both about marriages which are terrible and never should have been and marriages which are kind of okay but could be better but things aren't quite working out right. And in Is He Poppin' Joy he writes brilliantly about marriage in a wonderful wonderful way, at some of his best writing and like I said there's just a few things about the book that let it down but it's really really worth a read because the writing about marriage in it and the exploration of marriage is so good and also the look at kind of inheritance and all the complications around it is really interesting too. At number five I have The Belton Estate, this is a wonderful little novel, quite short and quite simple in comparison to some of his other books so maybe quite a good place to start and we follow a young woman called Clara, she lives with her father on her father's estate and the estate is entailed on the nearest male relation meaning it will go to her distant cousin Will and Clara on her father's death will be left with absolutely nothing. So we follow Clara and how she is torn between two very different men, one in fact being her cousin Will who will inherit the estate and one being another man and we follow kind of Clara's relationships with these two men and also with her neighbours nearby who have a secret. My favourite thing about The Belton Estate is Clara's character, she is such a strong, impressive character with like such a strong sense of her own like purpose and her emotional strength is just wonderful and that's the thing that I really really love about The Belton Estate, it's a wonderful novel in many ways but Clara as a character is just fantastic and I would highly recommend it. At number four I have The American Senator, this is a wonderful Trump novel that I really really enjoyed and we follow mainly two very different women living in this small town and who are sort of vaguely connected but not that connected. One of them is very likeable and kind of in unrequited love with a man who is a bit older than her and who it would never occur to him that she might be in love with him and then the other of our main female characters is very different, she is quite mercenary, she is scheming to find the best match she possibly can and she has no time really for love, what she really wants is power, money and someone to marry her so that she can get these things. Yet despite the fact that she's not that likeable because you understand that's the only way for her to have like stability as a woman in this time period, she's also really likeable, it's so fantastic and I really really love it. A subplot in this book is that there is an American senator present in this town who finds England weird in many ways. I don't think the book should really be called The American Senator because he's not very important. At number three I have The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope. This is the last book in the Palliser series and one that I really really loved, it's a wonderful story mostly focusing on a young woman and her brother and her father. Both the young people want to make marriages that their father does not approve of, their father is quite kind of conservative with a small c and they are quite modern for the time and it looks really interestingly at kind of generational clash and divides within the Victorian period as well as looking a lot at class and title and politics and love and grief and family. It's a really wonderful novel and one that I would highly recommend. At number two is The Claverings. This is one of my favourite Trollope books that I've read this year, my favourite standalone Trollope that I've read this year, and this follows a young man called Harry Clavering who was torn between two very different women, one of whom is wealthy, his old love from a few years ago who has suddenly come back into his life, and the other is his newer love who is a much more sensible choice and he is torn between them. Harry Clavering behaves like an idiot but you also feel bad for him because you know that he understands that he's behaving like an idiot and he doesn't know how to stop, which is a really nice thing about it in many ways. He's a really interesting character, one of those characters that Trollope writes so well you're like what are you doing Harry, stop it, you could be better than this and you feel so strongly that they could be better than they're being. The setup of The Claverings is quite similar to the setup of The Eustace Diamonds and our hero in The Claverings is quite similar to the hero in The Eustace Diamonds. I think The Claverings does it much better but I would not recommend reading them back to back because you might find it feels a bit repetitive. Anyway, The Claverings is great. As well as that main plotline there's a wonderful subplot which I absolutely loved with Harry's sister and her Myra which I just thought has, for a subplot that at the beginning I didn't think was going to be very important, has some of the most powerful scenes in the whole book. So yeah that was a great read and one I would highly recommend. But at number one my favourite Trollope book of the year was The Prime Minister. This is the fifth book in the Palliser series and an absolute gem. The Prime Minister is amazing. It focuses on the Prime Minister and his wife and their kind of political and personal life, as well as focusing on a young woman who wants to marry a man her father does not approve of. And it is in many ways a book about marriage and what I was saying about is Heap Hop and Joy where one of the things that Trollope writes best about is marriage. Really The Prime Minister is a fantastic example about this where Trollope is writing about different marriages, some of which should never have happened and some of which could be better if only things were slightly different. And there's such a powerful, wonderful exploration of I think the way that Trollope writes about marriage and his insights into Victorian marriage as an institution, the power dynamics and power play between men and women within marriage, the complexities of Victorian marriage and the complexities of love, he writes it fantastically and The Prime Minister is a brilliant example of that and I love it for that so much. It's a wonderful, wonderful novel. Another thing Trollope writes wonderfully about as well as marriage is unrequited love and there are some beautiful passages about unrequited love in The Prime Minister. I would highly, highly recommend it. It's a truly wonderful novel and yeah, such a fantastic read. So yeah, those are the 12 books by Anthony Trollope that I read this year. I enjoyed most of them, well all of them really except for Phineas and Radu, which is a bit of a duff. I love Anthony Trollope, he's one of my favourite Victorian authors, he writes wonderfully and beautifully, he has amazing insight into Victorian issues that I'm interested in, especially marriage and kind of gender dynamics. He writes fantastic, memorable characters who I love and I love his plot lines a lot. I will say that at the end of this year I found myself a bit Trolloped out, I think I've read a little few, a few too many Anthony Trollopes. While I enjoyed the bulk of what I read this year and actually like some of my favourite Anthony Trollope books during the second half of the year, there was a point in like May or June where, to be honest it was probably around the time I was reading Phineas and Radu, when I did feel like I just read a few too many Anthony Trollope books and that I wasn't appreciating his writing style and his books as much as I would if I had read them further apart. I still really loved reading a lot of Anthony Trollope this year, but I do think because one of the things I love about him so much is his writing style, reading a lot of Trollope books back to back meant I wasn't appreciating his writing style as much as I would have done if I had read these over the course of two years rather than one. So I'm not going to be carrying on with the Trollope project into the next year, but I hope I will still read, I'm sure I will still read a few books by Anthony Trollope in 2020 and hopefully I will one day read them all. I'm really pleased that I've got through a few more Anthony Trollope. I've read some really fantastic books this year and yeah, I still love Anthony Trollope a lot so that's good. Please let me know down in the comments what you think of Anthony Trollope, if you've read anything by him, if you're interested in any of the books I've talked about today. And that's all, thank you very much for watching and I'll be back very soon with another bookish video.